SprayTrace Features

Workflow

Launch SprayTrace and develop your shots with instant rendered feedback that perfectly matches mental ray® renderings. No need to adjust your mental ray® render settings, SprayTrace is built for speed and will always render really fast. Once you are happy with the shot in SprayTrace, render the final production render using mental ray® as usual.

Compatible

SprayTrace uses your CPU only, no special graphics card or drivers are required. SprayTrace is compatible with Autodesk Maya versions 2008 upwards, so you can make the most of your existing hardware and software investment. Now at version 1.5, SprayTrace supports virtually all mental ray® shaders and also supports MentalCore shaders too. SprayTrace is a separate application to Maya and can be displayed on a second display if required. If the worse happens and SprayTrace crashes (let's be real... all complex software can crash from time to time), it should not crash your Maya session like an IPR session will.

Smart

SprayTrace is smart and only re-renders pixels that need to change as shader properties are adjusted. Furthermore SprayTrace understands how many render passes each pixel has received, so once a changed area has caught up with sample level of the rest of the image, it will start rendering the entire shot to a higher sample level... it's just smart!

The Usual Suspects

Instant Final Gathering

New smoothed final gathering provides high quality fast feedback at low sample levels. For example, using mental ray® physical sky and sun, you get fast rendered feedback whilst positioning the sun, including live final gather results.

Render Snapshot Buffer

Keep and compare your test shots as you work, save the stack of snapshots to disc with a single click. A great way to provide clients with test renders for approval with the minimum of effort. Quickly compare test shots moving the mouse over their thumbnails. Easily compare more than one shot this way.

Material Overrides

Replace scene materials with clay or plastic. Material overrides help you understand the lighting within the scene without the complication of them interacting with the final scene materials.

Lighting Overrides

Override the lights to use SprayTrace as a super viewport, to do texturing work for example, but with results that match your final mental ray® mapping. Far superior than using the Maya viewport.

Render Elements Overrides

Shadow Rays Off, Reflection Rays Off, Refraction Rays Off

Use render elements overrides to simplify the rendering for faster feedback on complex scenes or to better understand the shot.

Update Eye Rays that change only

Use this setting such that when a shader's properties are being adjusted, only the direct pixels using that shader are updated, so reflections and refractions of that shader will not be updated. This reduces the render workload and allows users to fine tune material settings in the context of a well resolved render, with only the direct eye rays seeing the shader they are changing updating.

For more detailed information, please take a look at the PDF User Guide